De La Soul 3 Feet High and Rising Skits (1989)

Prince Paul:“The concept of skits came about after we were done making the record. It was literally at the end, we were sequencing and putting the album together.

The problem what I have with MCs is you don’t know their names; you don’t know their personalities, unless you really know the group, or they have a lot of publicity. So I was like, ‘Yo, why don’t we play a game show?’

“The problem what I have with MCs is you don’t know their names; you don’t know their personalities, unless you really know the group, or they have a lot of publicity. So I was like, ‘Yo, why don’t we play a game show?’

“Back in those days, in game shows people would go on and say, ‘Hi, my name is something, and I like to do this and that.’ So I said, ‘This will give you guys the opportunity to say your names, and tell people know who is who when they first listen to the album. And it gives them an idea of what your personality’s like.’

“So we kept the theme throughout the album. We’ll have little answers to the questions for the game show, and we just found the pieces together on the spot. Our engineer was the game show host. He was a white guy with the perfect voice.

His name was Alan, and he was at the studio. [Laughs.] It was super spontaneous. We had no idea that it would have any type of impact ever. It was just a way of piecing the record together.

Dante the Scrub, that’s Dante Ross. We called him that because he was someone from the label to come spy on us.

“I would say the blessing of signing with Tommy Boy was that we had a lot of freedom to make things. I think Tommy Boy believed in us, but didn’t believe in us. So that meant low budget to begin with. So they were just like, ‘Ah, go ahead.’ And that’s what we did, and they didn’t say anything.

“As far as those bits about Dante Ross, I have nothing bad to say about the man. If I knew how cool Dante was we probably wouldn’t have gone so negatively about him in the album. Yeah, Dante the Scrub, that’s Dante Ross. [Laughs.]

“We called him that because he was someone from the label to come and spy on us. Good dude. Now, I’m super cool with Dante. But at the time we just felt like he was part of the establishment, someone who was out to get us. Like, ‘Eh, you’re with the label.’”